China and the West

Williams, Carlos Williams. Sour grapes : a book of poems. (Boston : Four Seas Co., 1921).
Qian Zhaoming : Bo Juyi gave Williams the technique of achieving wholeness by means of uniting opposing elements. The immediate effect of using the strategy is a tangible harmony in Sour grapes poems : the dark is balanced with the light, the cold with the warm, the death with the living, and the sour with the sweet. Bo Juyi not only employs the same metaphor, but employs it to illustrate precisely the same truth about the world. It is certainly possible that Williams took both the image and the idea from the Chinese poet.
Williams' effort to see life as whole, as Bo Juyi did.
Williams make the following statement in 1956 :"Everyone knows the meaning of sour grapes, but it had a special meaning for me. I've always thought of a poet as not a successful man except in his own mind, which is devoted to something entirely different than what the world whinks of as success. The poet puts his soul in his work and if he writes a good poem he is successful. When I decided on the title I was playing a game, sticking my fingers up to my nose at the world. All the poems are poems of disappointment, sorrow. I felt rejected by the world. But secretly I had my own idea. Sour grapes are just as beautiful as any other grapes. The shape, round, perfect, beautiful. I knew it – my sour grape – to be just as typical of beauty as any grape, sweet or sour. But the world undoubtedly read a sour meaning into my title."